Trop, circa 1985 (grad school)

Life's little time capsules

Saturday night at the gay cafe we stayed at it way later than we we're supposed to. No one wanted to go home.

I'm in charge of music at the cafe. I'd run through my play list, so I asked people what they wanted to hear. The requests were all pretty predictable, and some were funny.

And then one young man asked if I had Bronski Beat.

OMFG. Bronski Beat. Love and Money. Hearing it after all these years was like cracking open a time capsule from a very brief but very intense time in my life.

It was 1985. I was a struggling grad student on a six-month stint in Columbus Ohio, at the Ohio Data User's Center, doing population projections. I was befriended by the Center's librarian, Jean, a thirty-something divorcee (I was a very tender 24). Let's just say she expanded my world.

She loved Bronski Beat and that song. And I don't think I've heard it since then. In fact, I haven't thought about Columbus or Jean the librarian in all this time. When my time at the Center was up I returned to grad school and that was that.

Sheesh! I'm so fucking old because that was 25 years ago. And Saturday night at the gay cafe Love & Money brought it all back like a life-flashes-before-your-eyes movie trailer.

Living the good life

Not much to blob about. Things end up on Twitter, and what's the point of blogging them later? The things I tweet in the sperm spur of the moment, however... I need a twitter muzzle.

For the first time in fourteen years I'm not taking a prescription crazy med. Along the way I'd been on Prozac, Luvox, Zoloft, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Effexor and finally Celexa. I think consuming all those drugs over all that time permanently altered my brain chemistry, and not in a good way. No doubt they helped me, especially early on when things went to hell in my life for a while.

Life's not a living hell anymore, and it hasn't been for years. To the contrary, my life is fanfuckingtastic.

Why me? I've done despicable things. I have not earned this happiness. No matter, I'll keep it while it's here.

So I'm going to give it a go, to see if I can lick my demon with exercise, diet, semi-retirement, and lots of sex (a particularly fine benefit of not being medicated).

In the meantime, I've been a lot loopy lately. I've probably acted inappropriately. Hell, I went shopping the other day and bought stuff!

I'm not necessarily apologizing by that admission. I'm just sayin'.

I'm hoping that a prescription-free me, Kimberly, can be like my moniker, the smooth un-turbulent air that jetliners surf.

Aside from being an occasional asshole (ok, frequent) all seems well so far. Some things are way better (Hotter. Than. A. June. Bride.); other things concern me (buried things are bubbling up); and the rest is too early to tell.

Truthfully, I suspect it could get bumpy ahead. I might dredge up a lot of shit. And I'll probably blog it.

Consider yourself warned. And please, friends, talk me down if I get ridiculous.

Music can be like a time capsule

I listened to Holly Cole yesterday. I hadn't listened to her in years. Hearing her again was like cracking open a time capsule.

There have been periods in my past where the one thing driving me forward was music. This is particularly true of my Pittsburgh years (1995-98). Among my constant companions at that time was Holly Cole's Dark Dear Heart. Onion Girl was getting a lot of play on alternative radio at the time.

I was at Carnegie Mellon, where my mission was to figure out a smart way to spend $10 million dollars. The fulfillment of that mission eventually became my dissertation and provided me with a bankable skill that supports my semi-retired life. I did the best work of my career at Carnegie Mellon. But it left me completely burned out.

I've never fully recovered.

Pittsburgh will go down as the most intense time of my life.

Amanda was still a preschooler. And though she was a delightfully easy child, she was still a preschooler. A preschooler with food allergies.

Though Raj could still command more salary at that time than I could, he couldn't keep a job and had three during those 31 months. It didn't help that he was very ill much of that time. The drugs he trialed were sometimes worse than his psychoses. At one point his weight dropped below 120 pounds. That was scary.

But, there were no 911 calls or overnight stays at the county psych hospital, so relatively speaking, Pittsburgh was a period of calm.

So there I was, working a really intense high-stakes job, raising a preschooler, and nursing a psychotic husband who couldn't hold a job.

That's a perfect time to write a dissertation.

For a year my schedule, aside from my roles as wife, mother and planning analyst, consisted of two or three hours most nights either reading, writing, researching, or crunching data. Nearly every Friday and Saturday became all-nighters, reserving sleep for 5:00am until Amanda would wake up. I'd tune out all of life's distractions with music and work. Holly Cole was there for much of it.

Cole's version of River will always be my favorite. I finished my dissertation in the fall and graduated just five days before Christmas. River so captured my emotional state at that time. Brings me to tears...

And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly

What is it about spring?

It triggers such strong memories.

Easter is one of my springtime triggers.

We spent an Easter at Lake Tahoe. It would be our last family vacation. Raj, Amanda and me. Raj was really fucked up. It was the beginning of the implosion.

Four weeks later, in moments worthy of this show, I left him.

Look what I found

My high school year book picture, 1978.

I know the pain people are feeling

If you are one of the many Americans who has been living beyond your means, then I know the pain and fear you may be feeling right now.

Six years ago I had a five bedroom, three car garage house with an address just ten miles from the Pacific ocean. My monthly mortgage payments totaled $4,000.

Then the bubble burst.

My long-troubled, nearly 11-year marriage to Amanda's father ended. He was jobless and living unsupervised in the house. Amanda and I retreated to a $1,800/month condo (a bargain, believe it or not). Because Raj was unemployed, I was under court order to pay $1,300/month in spousal support.

It was insane.

I had petitioned and it was so ordered that the house be sold, forcing Raj to move out. The purchase price was much less than we needed to break even and the house sold short. In a deal to hang onto my retirement savings, I took 100% of the short-sale debt. It was a good trade. Though he had equal share of the short-sale debt, he also had equal claim to my TIAA-CREF accounts.

Then California's economy tanked (thanks Enron), and I got RIFd from the university that employed me. That's right, I was fired.

How the hell else would I end up sharing a ZIP code with the late not-a-Dr. Jerry Falwell?

Anyway, that's my embarrassing financial meltdown, bubble-got-burst, sordid, woe-is-me tale.

But here's the moral: I survived.

I got some financial help from my parents, but it went toward my legal fees, which were not trivial (a six-month court fight over child custody, spousal and child support, division of assets and debts, sale of the house).

Undoing the financial damage wasn't pretty. In fact, it really hurt. Interest rates were killing me and three years ago I was pushed into Chapter 13. I've worked two jobs most of that time. My life has simplified dramatically.

I'm in better financial shape now than I've ever been (even as my retirement savings are vanishing like farts in the wind with tanking stocks). By this time next year, seven years from the divorce, I will have completely paid back the debt.

It will take a lot longer to get my income up to where it was back in my heady California dreamin' days. That doesn't really matter. I have plenty.

My point is, the sky didn't fall. I learned, the stupid way, to embrace thrift.

The United States was a much stronger nation when our well being was based on thrift. Over my lifetime we've become a nation that borrows for everything. We're all vulnerable because of it. Perhaps it's not a bad thing that we take our spanking, suffer our losses, and collectively reconnect with our inner Ben Franklin.

My grad school years

Two weeks from now I'll be taking Court and Amanda with me to a reunion of faculty and students from my grad program. It's shaping up to be a wild time.

It may end up being one of those times when Dr. S. is invited but Kim (insert-Trop's-maiden-name) shows up.

I left home for graduate school in 1984 without a car, just $200 in savings, and an assistantship netting just $450 a month. I was 23 years old. By the time I left in 1992, I was a married- pregnant- thirtysomething- ABD- college administrator.

For some reason I rarely --and I mean rarely-- think about grad school. I think it's because the years after were so awful they eclipsed anything that came before. ~sigh.

Anyhow...

Not surprisingly, the reunion has triggered memories; things I haven't really thought about in a really long time; things such as:

I was an orientation leader with this woman...

I touched this guy...

My next-door neightbor pulled a murder-suicide on his wife and kids...

I survived an apartment building fire... and a tornado...

I broke up a fight between a drunk man with a gun and his drunk wife...

R E A L L Y slow on the uptake

All this talk of squirrel and I'm just now giggling at this:


I once lived in a place called Squirrel Hill.

Overheard @ Trop's

"Ahhh... I got the biggest paragraph."

That was Amanda's response when she read the acknowledgments section of my dissertation. My only hard copy I made into a scrapbook, with cards and messages attached to the blank sides of pages. Amanda is looking at the page with "her" paragraph, and pasted next to it is her artwork and signature. She was four at the time.

Still finding my rhythm

I'm still adjusting to life as an employed stay-at-home mother. I suspect my adjustment will continue for a long while.

I enjoyed mothering all the kids while they were here. And now I am enjoying the last couple of weeks with Amanda before she goes back to school on the 25th.

I had a stretch of 12-hour days with nine projects due in the last two weeks of July, and now I am coming off seven days of no work. Yesterday I was given three projects, all due on Wednesday. More will come.

We've been doing SO much driving. We rented a Grand Caravan for the trip to Little Rock, and turned it in having driven 2,099 miles in five days. While the kids were here we made day trips to Greensboro, NC; Virginia Beach; Lexington, VA; and Natural Bridge, VA (sometimes in two cars).

This past Tuesday we drove to Charlottesville to meet the very fine Ms. Chapin. She says we cooked dinner for her. The truth is, we took her to a fondue restaurant.

We're not done traveling. My paternal family reunion is tomorrow in PA. We're driving up early in the morning for the afternoon picnic. Afterward we'll head over to BFF Tina's for Karaoke night at Johnny Angels.

Tonight for date night we are going to the Pittsylvania County rodeo.


Court and I had an anniversary on Sunday, while we were in Little Rock. It seems impossible that she and I have been together only four years. We fit like time-tested precision, well beyond our years as a couple. Nevertheless, it was just four years ago, on Aug 3, that I drove to Little Rock to move her to Radford, VA for graduate school. That was also our first face-to-face meeting.

Yes, Court and I started out as an Internet romance.

So. Tawdry.

Our first year was rocky. I was still smarting from my divorce. I was broke and demoralized. And I wasn't out to anyone that mattered. The first night she was in my home, I looked at her and said to myself, "She's going to break my heart."

She hasn't.

Ever.

Near the end of our first year I panicked. I had doubts. I suddenly felt like life with her was not what I wanted. And I told her so. It was honest, it was the right thing to do, but it was a brutal blow to her. The woman NEVER wavered. And she impressed me. My panicking wasn't an attempt to test her, but in that crisis, she proved herself a keeper.

I've not doubted since.


I have to be the luckiest, and happiest, woman alive right now.

me: sorry... got a call

YG: thats ok

me: I'm trying to figure out/debug

why results of SPSS programming don't match my spreadsheet calculations.

12:07 PM YG: that sounds fun :(

2:35 PM me: I've been grouchy

I think I'm DIVING into menopause

2:36 PM something's up with me.

I find myself wanting to be pregnant.

Like the last ticks of fertility are banging on me

YG: smile

2:37 PM me: And my mojo is through the fucking roof

YG: the pregnancy part I like- its the after infancy stage that I've had enough of

well- that's never a bad thing, lol

me: I hated being preggers.

YG: I liked it

me: I was miserable all those nine months

me: I vomited at least once every day

YG: I had really pretty easy pregnancies

and deliveries too for that matter

me: I had to be induced with Amanda

YG: I always had to be "induced" cause I never technically went into labor

But I was always really dilated

me: Oh yes

THAT hurts like hell

me: I was so glad when they pumped nubaine through my drip.

YG: yeah I had some nubaine

me: And of course I was vomiting through labor.

YG: that sucks

I never felt like that

in labor

me: And though the Dr gave me an episiotomy, I still tore

and I got the worst hemorrhoids

YG: man

me: I didn't have bladder control for days.

YG: I just remember my hips hurting so bad the last few weeks

me: Amanda was average, 6' 14"

YG: he was 9 lbs 2 oz

me: that's HUGE

me: dairy really set me off

and I could smell everything, from a mile away.

me: And here I WANT to be pregnant

What's wrong with me???

YG: thats ok

menopause does strange things to us

I admire your courage for wanting to have kids w/ Courtney

me: In my dreams, Bobby Labonte would be the father (for whom I might even consider tossing aside the turkey baster).

me: out of control mojo and all.

just sayin'

me: I'm going to ask my doctor about it

YG: about if you could get pregnant?

or about why you want to be pregnant?

me: A) If I could physically handle it, B) if genetically my eggs are still viable.

if physically I could handle it, but my eggs are not viable we'd have one of court's eggs fertilized and I'd carry the baby to term

Thursday musings

Let's see... what's new.

I've been working, hard. That is new. There are so many big projects to wrap up before I end my tenure at the college. It keeps me awake at night. This week I prepared a 55-page report for an all-day meeting I have tomorrow.

I hate it. Every bit of it. I am so ready to be done with the college.

Then there is the consulting. At the beginning of this project cycle the consultants hired an analyst to help with the load. They flew me to CO to train her. The plan was for me to manage four schools, and she would manage four schools. In the end, she decided she couldn't manage any, so I got all hers plus another for good measure. So, I am juggling nine colleges right now. It's a full time job and then some. But I LOVE the work.

Even so, it's really starting to wear me down.

~~~~~~~

Amanda got two birthday cards from her father, who now resides in Calcutta, India. He sent them via my parents in PA. With her permission, I decided to write to him. I sent recent pictures of her and told him things that would make him happy, like how she's excelling in math, and that she's playing soccer.

As for him, he's still fixated on Miss World 1994, pictured here. He wrote that she is Amanda's biological mother.

He also thinks he's Jesus Christ.

It is so sad. It really is. The man is the gentlest person I know, and he was so smart and so funny. What a fucking waste. I wish Amanda could know him as he was when I first met him.

It wasn't an easy letter to write. I wanted to ask him "Where the hell is the Volvo!" since I'm still paying for it. But I didn't. I was also tempted to ask, "Is there any chance you might send one of the court ordered child support payments you're supposed to send every month until Amanda is 18?" But there's really no point in asking, so I didn't.


~~~~~~
I called my mother today. The poor woman had several teeth pulled on Tuesday. She was really dreading it and is relieved to have it over with. She's 78 and is in otherwise fairly good health, except that she is becoming frail. She has to inject herself every day with a bone building drug to fend off osteoporosis. The cost of that drug is $2,000/month and she's about to hit the Medicare D donut hole. She and my father live on an annual fixed income of about $20k, so I don't know how they will make up the hole.

My older sister (K, 54) had a precancerous polyp removed from her cervix, and she'll most likely have a hysterectomy. Her husband just completed treatment for prostate cancer. He's doing well, but has discomfort from the radioactive seeds planted in his prostate.

Things aren't all bad. My younger sister (A, 43) is about to graduate with an MBA. I am so proud of her. We'll be going to PA in May for her graduation. I love graduations.

~~~~~
Finally, I am hoping for nice weather this weekend. We (Amanda and I) have a lot of yard work to do and it's been raining for weekends on end. I need to hose down the house as it is covered in clay dust from road construction (and grave digging).

Of reunions and closets

One of my graduate professors sent me an email earlier this week. He and a couple of my classmates are organizing a reunion and they'd like me to attend. This is all well and good.

There is nothing like the bond you have with your graduate school classmates. You become a tight knit cohort suffering through the same classes, the same nonsensical academic hazing hurdles. You work together, party together, and sometimes you end up living with each other.

The last time I saw many of my classmates, they were toasting me at my wedding. For others, the last time was when I left Bowling Green 18 months later. I was ABD and six months pregnant. And for others it was when a happy looking family -- me, Raj and a four year old Amanda -- made a last trip to Bowling Green for my graduation.

Obviously, a lot has changed since then.

So here I am, once more, coming out AGAIN. Though it gets easier, I still hate that it has to be done.

The day William F. Buckley, Jr. was upstaged by Mr. Rogers

It was May 1987. I was supposed to be marching across a stage to receive my master's degree. My parents drove the 330 miles to Ohio to see me graduate, even though I failed to finish my thesis in time to participate. I hadn't even started writing the damned thing.

We decided to go to graduation anyway. William F. Buckley Jr. was the keynote speaker. He was one of the better known luminaries to speak at a BGSU commencement. It was a big deal.

I had been to my share of commencement exercises, so I had a good idea what to expect from Buckley: sage words of wisdom and advice for all the lucky suckers graduating that day.

After an introduction long on accolades and praise, Buckley stepped up to the podium. He spoke. When he finished, there was a moment of awkward silence followed by tepid applause.

Though none of us dared to admit it, I suspect we were all asking ourselves: "What the fuck was that all about?"

You know what I'm talking about.

How perfect that on this day, the recipient of an honorary doctorate also gave a speech. While Buckley lost us with his ten dollar words and never ending sentences, this man kept it simple.

This man was none other than Fred Rogers, of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. In his quintessentially gentle manner, Mr. Rogers spoke of all those things one needs to know and learns in the neighborhood... his neighborhood (forget about Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum). He ended his speech by leading us all in the singing of It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

The crowd cheered and erupted in impassioned applause. I'll never forget it. The ever humble Fred Rogers totally upstaged William F. Buckley, Jr.

How fitting, at least in my mind, that Mr. Rogers and Mr. Buckley have February 27th in common.

Rest in peace, neighbors.

This day in Courtney History

For Christmas, Court's mother gave her a baby book. It notes all sorts of trivia about the day she was born, her family tree, etc. It also notes important milestones, such as the one that happened on this day some 25 years ago.

"Courtney did her first potty!"

Congratulations Courtney!

Can you spot the lie? REVEALED

1. In college, I spent a weekend at a commune, and seriously considered joining.

I did visit a Bruderhof while in college. But I never seriously considered joining, especially after I discovered that, being Hutterites, Bruderhof women have the highest fertility of any known group.


2. Oscar Mayer called me on the phone once.

Oscar Mayer III worked at Carnegie Mellon University. During my tenure there he once called me on the phone to tell me I'd been nominated for a productivity award. I thought it was a prank call. "Oscar Mayer? Yeah right. And I'm Sara Lee." As far as I know, he didn't drive to work in the weinermobile.


3. As a little kid, I wanted to be a talk show host when I grew up.

My mother was a faithful fan of The Mike Douglas Show. It came on every afternoon at 3:00, and since there was just one TV in the house, that's what everybody watched. I wanted to be just like him.

Great Performances

Growing up, I was exposed to a lot of classical music. Though mine was a very frugal, working- class family, we were the only household among our friends, neighbors, and relatives to have a hi-fidelity stereo system. As kids, my siblings and I were outliers because we loved classical music.

In the early 1980s CBS (now Sony) came out with their Great Performances series. Our family owned quite a few records from this series. Our favorite, by far, was Pictures At An Exhibition. We played the hell out of that record. At the time, my younger sister was in the high school color guard, and along with the entire marching band traveled the eastern seaboard winning band competitions performing excerpts from Pictures.

Readers who grew up watching The Smurfs will recognize two pieces (Gnomus, Tuileries) from Pictures.

Older readers may recall that Emerson, Lake & Palmer covered Pictures (I don't recommend their version).

Imagine my delight when I discovered the Great Performances version of Pictures available on Rhapsody. It's on the Zen play list now.